Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are experiencing daily increases in the amount of network traffic passing through their data networks. Unfortunately, due to certain infrastructural limitations, some ISPs may be unable to accommodate these increases in network traffic without assistance from additional resources (such as wireless hotspots). As a result, some ISPs may establish roaming agreements with wireless hotspots that provide access to the Internet using Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies. Through these roaming agreements, the ISPs may offload a portion of the network traffic from their data networks to wireless hotspots to help accommodate these increases in network traffic.
While traditional wireless hotspots may enable ISPs to offload a portion of network traffic, such hotspots may still be unable to properly distinguish between legitimate client devices associated with the ISPs and rogue client devices that are not associated with the ISPs. For example, a rogue client device that does not subscribe to any of the ISPs supported by a traditional wireless hotspot may obtain a list of authentication identifiers (e.g., Organizationally Unique Identifiers (OUIs) and/or realm codes) from an access point of the wireless hotspot. This rogue client device may then request that the access point authenticate the device with one of the ISPs supported by the wireless hotspot based on an authentication identifier corresponding to that ISP.
Unfortunately, by requesting such authentication, the rogue client device may cause the access point to consume some of the hotspot's resources and/or degrade the hotspot's performance. Additionally or alternatively, the rogue client device may gain illegitimate access to the Internet by hacking the wireless hotspot. The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for detecting rogue client devices connected to wireless hotspots.